The Hallway Smelled Like Her

A cart went by with folded towels

and the smell came off them —

not clean exactly, something that prowls

underneath the chemical hymn

of the corridor, older than that,

warmer. Talcum. Wool. The heat

a body keeps in a room it's sat

in long enough. The repeat

of it stopped me in the middle of the hall.

Eleven years and it still lands

like a door swung open. I couldn't move at all,

my hands

just there at my sides.

My grandmother's house, a winter afternoon,

the towel closet with its stacked white guides

to a life lived in the same four rooms.

The cart rolled on.

The smell thinned in the corridor air —

industrial, bright, fluorescent, gone.

My aunt was waiting somewhere.

I walked toward her.